All This is Too Much
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Everybody is making statements about everything these days. I feel bad that I haven’t made one too, that I haven’t had anything insightful to say about trauma during the pandemic and protests and political $%#*@.
This is an unprecedented experience of trauma on so many levels--the pandemic is a shared, global trauma unlike anything the human race has seen before, and the protests against racial injustice represent hundreds of years of internalized, systemic trauma that desperately needs to be expressed and addressed. I wish I had something timely and helpful to contribute because I believe this is a pivotal moment and that the way forward requires a greater understanding of trauma and how it affects individuals and societies.
Right now my system is on overload. My mind, body, and spirit can’t process everything. I don’t want to diminish, over-simplify, or ignore what’s happening but I can’t take it all in. At best, I remember to come back to the present and do a reality check: am I safe right now? Is my family safe? And then adjust accordingly. But most of the time I’m bumbling around in a hyper-vigilant daze, self-soothing with food and wine and BritBox, half asleep but ready to jump out of my skin at the least provocation (or change of color in those graphs tracking the number of cases in my state). For example, the other night someone was setting off fireworks to celebrate graduations and I seriously thought for a moment that the Canadians were invading. Because why not, everything else is blowing up right now.
I feel like a jerk saying my brain and body have kicked into trauma mode, when I’m not experiencing anything like the stress some people in the world are coping with right now...but that’s the nature of trauma. Whether it’s old trauma being triggered, or new trauma created by massive change and/or loss; whether you’re experiencing it directly, or seeing people around you experiencing it--it’s an undeniable part of everyone’s experience these days. And it has an impact.
Beyond knowing this, I am so far from having a clue about what to do about it…I should say something about staying present with whatever arises….and that is a correct answer, but it’s also a really hard thing to actually do. I can only manage it when I’m really forced too, when things get so intense that wine and TV can’t placate my nervous system any more and I kind of don’t have a choice. Only then do I finally get all cosmic about things and touch God. Or something. More on that in a later blog or more enlightened lifetime.
Other things that are helping me get by: looking out the window at my garden, talking to support people (friends, family, and professionals), playing with my cat, wearing silly hats, laughing at my own jokes, cooking good food, and reading good stories. More on good stories in a later blog too.
But first my sympathetic nervous system needs to stand down and allow my prefrontal cortex to come back on line. In other words, I need to calm down enough that my brain starts working again. Just because things are opening up out there, doesn’t mean my nervous system is ready to take it all on.
So, I still don’t have a statement or awesome advice (though I could recommend some very low impact British mysteries). But I’ll offer the following, for what it’s worth: Whatever you’re doing to get by, however your autonomic nervous system is or is not treating you, don’t beat yourself up for it or feel you should be doing more. Let yourself do the things that soothe you, and beyond taking care of daily safety and needs, don’t worry about solving anything yet. The time for that will come and don’t worry, you will be up for it. More on that later too. Until then, keep up that self-soothing!